We’ve all made plans for what we’d do if we were dropped on a postapocalyptic desert world with nothing but our keen wits and a vast arsenal to survive. Or you’ve made these plans if you’ve watched The Road Warrior more than once recently…

Steve Jobs is a very powerful man. With a single word, he has been known to lay waste to inferior products and technologies.

Okay, maybe that's not true. Look at Windows, it's been around for ages and Steve hasn't exactly been quiet about how much better the Mac OS is to Windows. Still, that hasn't stopped people from blaming Jobs for the demise of, well, just about anything.

With iWeb already on your Mac, you might not bother to explore alternative web-design applications. But since it didn’t get updated for iLife ’11, now might be the perfect time to shop around for something new—especially if you’ve outgrown iWeb’s simplistic feature set. Adobe’s popular Dreamweaver is a huge, complex, and expensive piece of software that’s out of reach for casual designers. Thankfully, RapidWeaver just got a brand-new update, and it’s both simpler and cheaper than Dreamweaver.

Mac|Life was in Boston this weekend to scope out the Apple gaming presence at the bi-annual Penny Arcade Expo. PAX is primarily known for its focus on console gaming, but Apple gaming -- particularly iOS games -- have slowly been creeping into the show.

If you want to get your DVD collection onto your Mac, Apple TV or portable iOS device, chances are you’ve already discovered the free HandBrake software, which handles the task like a champ. What you may not know is that there are some simple tricks and tweaks to make HandBrake really sing, particularly if you’ve been challenged by getting commercial discs from your personal collection properly encoded.

Hold on to your wallet! MobileMe is great, but with a little work, Google can sync your Mac’s most important stuff -- mail, contacts, and calendars -- to your iOS device and back for free. Before taking the plunge, make sure all the most recent data is on your Mac, then back it up with Time Machine so you can restore it if necessary.

When Apple announces new products, it's time to search under those couch cushions for the to afford any of the new Macs and iOS devices. And with the advent of the iPad 2, surely you're fiending, thinking of a way to make some quick cash to obtain one of Apple's next-generation tablets for yourself. If you have some old Macs lying around, you're in luck, because they might be worth some cash. Follow along and we'll walk you through how to prepare your Mac for a resale.

It’s the new old news: phone calls are being replaced by text messages, and for a lot of business and personal matters, instant messages have taken over from the more cumbersome emails of yesteryear. Rather than trading individual messages back and forth (which then must be filed or deleted in your mailbox), many things can be handled more quickly in a brief chat conversation. But unfortunately, chat networks are (mostly) walled gardens, meaning you can only chat with people on the same network. Which means we all have a handful of chat accounts on different networks to cover all the bases. Rather than running four or five different applications, Trillian for Mac promises to simplify your chatting by consolidating all your networks into a single app.

It's here, it's here! iOS 4.3 dropped and it's ready for your iOS devices. But like most Apple updates, the update is full of features that Apple either doesn't advertise, or can be difficult to find if you don't spend the day rummaging through an entire iOS device's menu system.